


Wherever You Find It

by greenbirds



Series: Lorena Joy Gibbs [3]
Category: NCIS, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-07
Updated: 2011-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-16 04:21:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbirds/pseuds/greenbirds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>LJ Gibbs's first Thanksgiving with the Clan.</p><p>(This is an NCIS/Stargate genderflip AU; Clan Mitchell was created by synecdochic and is used under a creative commons attribution license.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wherever You Find It

_Home is wherever you find it._

It was something Hetty said to her on an gray October afternoon in that tiny little apartment in Leningrad, while the two of them sat at the battered table watching fat raindrops slide down the window glass, and LJ Gibbs has never forgotten it.

(When she went to the Gulf not so many years later, LJ wrote Hetty’s words on a notecard and taped it inside her footlocker. A talisman. A reminder. The notecard still lives in the top drawer of her desk, smudged with dirt, the remnants of the Scotch tape yellowed and brittle with age.)

Like so many things Hetty said (whether or not LJ had wanted to admit it at the time), it was true.

LJ’s Momma would’ve agreed with Hetty. Her Momma loved all those old clichés, the ones about home being where the heart is and where you hang your hat, and her Momma always said that her home was wherever Jackson Gibbs and her little Lorena Joy happened to be, whether that was Stillwater, Pennsylvania, or the Moon.

(Momma said you carried a little bit of home with you wherever you went, and way back in 1969, Momma carried home with her clear up to Heaven. After that, Stillwater, Pennsylvania didn’t seem much like home to LJ anymore, and by the time she was eighteen, LJ had been on a Greyhound bus, headed for anywhere else).

LJ had found home elsewhere over the years (found it and lost it and found it again, more times than she cared to count).

Home (once upon a time) had once been a series of tiny apartments in Russia, two rooms and a tiny kitchen and a shared bathroom down the hall (home had been Hetty and Archie and Jack and Jenny; home had been Russian words and Russian names and other selves; home had been toasting the new year with cracked teacups full of vodka). Later, home had been a crackerbox house on base with a bedraggled little square of lawn out front, the one she and Shawn had moved into after the wedding (they’d bought a couch and adopted a ridiculous-looking mutt from the pound and much later they’d idly talked about having kids, and then suddenly – life having changed in an instant, in an eyeblink; life having changed while LJ was somewhere else, fighting a war – Shawn was gone, felled by a drug dealer’s bullet).

These days (and time may not heal all wounds, but you can mostly learn to ignore them given long enough), home is Ducky in the morgue and Abby in her lab and the phones ringing in the squad room and Ziva’s fractured idiom and diNozzo’s smart mouth; home is McGee bristling at being called “Probie” and Jenny (Director Sheppard, but she’ll always be ‘Jenny’ to LJ) drinking the last of LJ’s coffee.

But _finding_ home is never quite the same as _going_ home.

LJ’s Momma knew that too.

Home for LJ’s Momma (Momma’s name was Evelyn Rae Mitchell) had been “somewhere down Black Mountain way” in North Carolina, and Momma had lit out of there on an ol’ Greyhound bus before she was even grown and rode the bus all the way up to Yankeeland to live with the Damnyankees, because that was almost far enough away. No one knew the whole story anymore; a fight with her Daddy and a burnt-out shed and what Jackson Gibbs had called “damnfool stiff-necked Southern pride,” but LJ’s Momma had missed her home and her people like burning, and she’d always been afraid to go back. (LJ’s Momma had carried home with her in a little metal box full of black-and-white pictures, and LJ had known the stories those pictures told by heart before she was even five years old.)

LJ’s Momma had never found her way back home, but last summer – entirely by accident (a broken-down car on the way back to Asheville and some old friends of diNozzo’s, and way back in Russia Archie had been fond of remarking that the world was a funny old place) – LJ ( _Lorena Joy_ ) Gibbs had.

And now she’s going back.

Last summer, before LJ and her team headed back to D.C., Momma Mitchell gave strict instructions that Lorena Joy Gibbs was to be at the Clanstead on Thanksgiving Day (come Hell or high water), and Tony diNozzo (Anthony Daniel, and apparently these instructions warranted the invocation of the Holy Middle Name) was told to make sure LJ didn’t wiggle out of the invitation at the last possible minute.

Turns out Anthony Daniel diNozzo is more afraid of Momma Mitchell than he is of his boss, so LJ finds herself sitting in the back seat of another rental car on a gray Wednesday afternoon in November, headed up Buncombe County way (at least this car hasn’t broken down yet; small mercies). A handful of straggling autumn leaves are still clinging to the branches of the trees lining the road, but winter’s clearly on its way.

( _Over the river and through the woods . . ._. They’d sung that song in music class back when LJ was in grade school, and it had been in that same music class that LJ Gibbs punched Shawn Allen in the nose for pulling her braids. Her music teacher had called her ‘Lorena _Gibbs_ ’ in a horrified tone and sent her to the principal, but that trip to the principal’s office and the six detentions that came after had been worth it, because LJ and Shawn were friends ever after, and when LJ came back from Russia, they’d gone before a Justice of the Peace and tied the knot.)

This year Jenny’s off in Los Angeles with her mother and her sisters (and she’ll probably stop for a visit with Hetty and Archie before she heads back to D.C., assuming Hetty and Archie aren’t off in Cornwall as they are now and again this time of year). Duckie and Jordan are having dinner at Duckie’s house – her family and his mother, who’s never entirely understood American Thanksgiving. McGee has been a ball of anxiety all week because his family is spending Thanksgiving in D.C. with _him_ this year, and Abby’s got mysterious _plans_ with her friends that LJ’s pretty sure involve black clothes and lots of music.

LJ Gibbs (strange as it is to even _think_ it) is going home.

Home to a big rambling house (the house in all her Momma’s pictures) stuffed to bursting with people. Home to turkey and pies and knitted afghans and a brag wall filled with old pictures and new (including one of Lorena Joy Gibbs sitting on the steps of that same house last summer; Momma Mitchell had snapped it before LJ headed back to D.C.). Home to Uncle Everett and Uncle Roy and Uncle Bay (the one Momma called her oldest little brother and loved best of all of them). Home to the woodshop. Home to Momma Mitchell.

Ziva’s riding shotgun (diNozzo wouldn’t let either Ziva or LJ drive; he said Thanksgiving’s supposed to be relaxing). Ziva protested that Israelis didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but diNozzo insisted (repeatedly; what he lacks in subtlety he’s always more than made up for in persistence) that regardless of what Ziva did or didn’t celebrate, it sucked to be on your own when everyone else was spending the day with family, and Ziva finally surrendered.

DiNozzo suggests they ought to have a sing-along. Ziva turns up the radio. Rain patters gently on the windshield. LJ sighs and closes her eyes, feeling light-years removed from D.C.

It’s chilly and the sun is setting by the time they pull into the driveway (and it’s already so full of cars that there’s barely room for diNozzo’s rental; apparently the entire universe spends Thanksgiving at the Mitchell house), but oncoming darkness doesn’t stop a small horde of children from pelting down the porch steps to greet the latest arrivals. Apparently diNozzo’s popular around these parts; he opens the car door to enough shrieks of “Uncle Tony!” to do any Hollywood megastar proud, and there’s no way he can hide his broad grin. LJ can hardly begrudge him.

Three younger men have followed the swarm down the steps (albeit at a more stately pace): two of them LJ remembers – Skipper and Spencer, the ones Momma Mitchell called the Plague of Frogs -- but the third (blue-eyed, sandy-haired, handsome, with the unmistakable bearing of active military; something like Special Forces unless LJ misses her guess) isn’t someone LJ knows (not that she’s surprised at this: there are more Mitchells and Griffiths and deSassures than there are stars in the sky, and that’s not counting the assorted strays the Mitchells have adopted over the years).

“Cameron Mitchell, call me Cam,” The stranger introduces himself as he swings LJ’s duffel out of the trunk over her protests that she can carry it herself (Skipper and Spencer have already made short work of diNozzo’s bags and Ziva’s). “And you must be Lorena Joy. Momma said you were coming this year. Don’t worry,” he adds in a sympathetic tone, “the first time’s a little overwhelming for everyone. Last year my cousin’s fiancée locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out for an hour. Hopefully you won’t do that.”

LJ swallows hard and follows Cam and the Plague of Frogs up the steps into the house, diNozzo and Ziva (and diNozzo’s crowd of adoring fans) at her side.

If the crowd in the front yard was boisterous, the scene inside the house is nothing short of delicately-ordered chaos. DiNozzo disappears into the crowd with an apologetic glance over his shoulder, borne along on a wave of children who want to know about his sports car and his latest girlfriend and what bad guys he’s arrested lately.

Ziva -- no stranger to large family gatherings, given some of the stories she’s told LJ about spending Passover with her mother’s family in Israel -- vanishes soon after, waved over (enthusiastically) by Uncle Al, who shouts something in Hebrew over the din (whatever it is, it makes Ziva grin and bark a short laugh). There’s a pretty, dark-haired girl with Uncle Al who must be the famous Theodosia, and they’re holding court in one corner, surrounded by a group of college-aged kids, girls and boys both. Whatever they’re talking about, there’s a lot of laughing and elbowing going on.

“Momma’s in the kitchen,” Cam says over his shoulder. “Quieter in there, too,” he adds. “Sorta. You go on. I’ll take your bags on up to your room and join y’all in a bit.”

The kitchen’s indeed quieter, at least in the sense that a helicopter is quieter than a jet engine, and there’s food on almost every flat surface – pie shells waiting to be filled, pies cooling on racks, rolls by the gross, bowls of vegetables, cranberries waiting to be turned into cranberry sauce – but there are fewer people in there, and it’s permeated by a sense of industry that’s almost soothing.

Momma Mitchell turns from the pot she’s stirring and favors LJ with a broad grin. “Lorena Joy, honey! You made it! How was your trip? Where’s Anthony?” LJ finds herself swept up in a hug before she knows it, and she can’t help but hug Momma back. (LJ says her trip was fine, and diNozzo’s off somewhere with a bunch of kids, and Ziva came with them too, and she’s in the front room talking to Uncle Al, and LJ can’t help the smile she feels spreading across her face).

By the time Cam (and he’s even better-looking than LJ thought) comes back into the kitchen with a blonde woman LJ recognizes in tow (Colonel Samantha Carter, who’d saved all of their butts with a ray gun during that bizarre McAvoy case last year. Momma Mitchell greets Colonel Carter – Sam – like family; apparently she’s been coming here for years), LJ’s sitting in what’s fast becoming her usual spot at Momma Mitchell’s kitchen table, breaking the ends of a whole pile of snap beans.

Turns out Cam and Sam Carter (they sit down at the table across from LJ, Cam with a pie shell he’s filling with apples, and Sam – who confesses her culinary skills aren’t any better than LJ’s own – with another pile of snap beans) are stationed together in Colorado, still doing stuff for the Air Force they’re not allowed to talk about (Cam says Thanksgiving’s hardly a time for talking shop anyway). They’re good company. Cam does most of the talking, but that’s okay.

(Once upon a time, LJ’s Momma told her little Lorena Joy stories about Thanksgiving at the Clanstead, about pies enough to feed an army and people flowing into the house like the ocean at high tide, and Gran’ma Hildy holding court in the kitchen and organizing the whole thing, orderly as clockwork, and it had seemed more than half fairy tale, especially compared to the stiff awkward dinners with Grandfather Gibbs passing judgment on everyone.)

The boys wander into the kitchen some time later (Uncle Everett and Uncle Roy and Uncle Bay, and they’re not really boys anymore but Momma Mitchell doesn’t seem to give a hoot about that).

Uncle Roy takes a few pieces of apple out of the pile that Momma Mitchell’s tending, and Momma Mitchell slaps his hand (he looks utterly unrepentant). Uncle Bay greets LJ with a one-armed hug around the shoulders and says he’s glad LJ could make it, and she’s always welcome in the woodshop if all of this (and he waves an arm to encompass the pandemonium in the house) gets to be too much. LJ grins up at him, this quiet man who was once her Momma’s favorite little brother. Uncle Everett kisses Momma Mitchell on the back of the neck (she shrieks girlishly and Uncle Everett grins) and continues on into the house.

(Last Thanksgiving, LJ’d spent the day at home, watching the dog show and working on her motorcycle. Motorcycles had been Shawn’s thing originally, but he’d passed the passion on to LJ by the time they’d been married a year. Jenny had screamed blue murder the following Monday, when she found out LJ hadn’t said anything about having nowhere to go.)

Later that night (once the pies are baked and most of diNozzo’s fan club has been tucked into bed) there’s a poker game in the den. It reminds LJ of card games she shared with Jack and Jenny on endless winter nights in Russia, only bigger, and filled with cigars and trash talk and Uncle Al and Ziva (between the two of them) winning most of everyone’s money. Skipper accuses Ziva of sharking them; Spencer (or at least LJ thinks it’s Spencer, since she still can’t tell them apart) offers to loan LJ another ten dollars, at an exorbitant interest rate. LJ laughs, and heads off to bed instead, declaring the game’s gotten too rich for her blood.

The next morning’s an early one. Half the house is up to help out with Thanksgiving dinner; the other half is up because they can’t sleep through the noise. Uncle Bay sits next to LJ at breakfast (like LJ, he’s not much for talking, but he smiles at her periodically), and she eventually follows him out to the woodshop for the quiet: Momma Mitchell hardly needs another pair of barely-skilled hands in the kitchen (Lord knows, she’s got enough grandchildren and nieces and nephews underfoot for that).

The woodshop is warm smells of pine and oak and other, rarer woods (smells LJ can’t quite identify), of wood finish and linseed oil, and the work benches are covered in projects in various stages of completion – boxes and chests and picture frames, all of them exquisite. When LJ slips carefully through the door, Everett is carefully sanding a tiny chair, clearly made to order for someone’s little boy or little girl.

The boys install LJ on a stool with some pieces of cut maple (it’s gorgeous, like sunlight trapped in wood), some sandpaper, and a few instructions, and once they’re satisfied she knows it’s a bad idea to sand cross-grain, they turn back to their own projects (LJ assures them she used to do this for her Daddy once upon a time, and finds herself wondering how long it’s been since the last time she voluntarily talked about Jackson Gibbs).

They don’t ask her anything (Uncle Roy says he’s sure Lorena Joy has probably had her fill of being quizzed by the entire Mitchell household), but the boys are happy to tell her stories about her Momma.

They’re happy to tell LJ about the time Evelyn Rae punched out the school bully (two years older, a good twenty pounds heaver, and a boy) in the fourth grade, about how she used to let the little boys stay up until all hours watching scary movies when Gran’pa Elias and Gran’ma Hildy went in to town of a Friday night and left her in charge, about the secret stash of chocolate that she’d hidden under the floorboards (and all the trouble she’d gotten in when the local coon had found it – and then found his way into the house).

The stories are like LJ’s Momma’s pictures, come to life.

LJ sands the maple carefully (it’s soothing, homelike) and tells the boys some of the stories they missed on account of Evelyn Rae having run away to Yankeeland. About how her Momma almost set the trees in the backyard on fire, setting off fireworks one fourth of July, and how Evelyn Rae Gibbs had once “accidentally” spilled coffee all over some tourist who pinched her behind when she was waiting tables at the diner. LJ tells them how her Momma could out-fish and out-shoot half the men in Stillwater, Pennsylvania and the boys laugh (apparently Evelyn Rae could out-shoot all of them too, back when. The only person in the family who had been a better shot had been Gran’ma Hildy).

By the time Momma Mitchell sends one of the innumerable nephews or grandsons (LJ isn’t sure to which category this particular blonde-haired child belongs) to call them in to dinner, they’re all covered in sawdust and laughing.

Somehow LJ finds herself seated between Uncle Bay and a little boy she met when she was at the Clanstead last summer (his name is John Jacob and his grandpa is the man LJ calls Uncle Roy and he’s six and he’d spent the better part of that summer afternoon sitting next to her on the porch swing, telling her how someday he wanted to be a cop and catch all the bad guys too).

As they’re joining hands to say the blessing, John Jacob looks up at her and asks, “What’re you thankful for, Aunt Lorena Joy?” (Aunt Lorena Joy being what pretty much anyone under eighteen, all of them utterly unconcerned with the intricacies of genealogy, calls her).

LJ looks around the table, at Momma Mitchell and Uncle Everett, at her cousin Cam who’s sitting next to Sam Carter (and Sam, who had seemed so serious the night before, is finally smiling), at Ziva and Uncle Al who are grinning at some joke only the two of them seem to understand, at Tony who is flirting shamelessly with Uncle Al’s student Theodosia. She looks at Uncle Roy, holding his latest grandbaby on his knee, and up at Uncle Bay, who winks at her. She looks at Great Aunt Lavvy, almost a hundred years old, seated at the other end of the table, next to one of her great-granddaughters.

(LJ knows she’ll be back come Christmas, knows that this year and the year after and the year after that, she’ll be standing on the front porch with everyone else when they take the annual picture, knows she’ll add those photos to the box that Uncle Bay once made for LJ’s Momma).

“I’m thankful,” LJ says, smiling down at John Jacob, “for being home.”

(Home, Hetty always said, is wherever you find it.)


End file.
